Your online staff profile
Find out how to update and improve your staff profile.
Benefits of a good profile
A good online staff profile can boost your reputation, improve your web presence and increase your chances of getting more funding and exposure.
Having a good Sussex profile, compared with just your own website, is useful because:
- you can be found in the search bar on sussex.ac.uk and appear in lists on school and department pages
- if you’re an academic, you can feature in prospectus pages, which helps students find potential supervisors in their areas of interest
- detailed Sussex profiles may appear high up on the first page of Google’s search results.
Your profile should speak clearly to everyone – even highly intelligent people prefer to read plain English online. People skim read online content and often only read about a quarter of the words on a web page.
What to do as a minimum
Keep your profile as succinct as possible and stick to your academic work.
As a minimum, you should:
- upload a high-quality picture of yourself
- include a sentence about your background
- sum up your research.
How to update your profile
How you update your profile depends on whether you're academic or professional services staff.
Academic staff
If you’re a member of academic staff at Sussex – such as a lecturer or researcher – you update your profile using Elements (you’ll need to log in).
Need help? See user guides and training videos for Elements.
Professional services staff
You update your profile using Sussex Direct (open in new window).
Depending on your role at Sussex, you’ll see different menu items.
Main profile page
This is your front (and possibly only) page.
It outlines your:
- post (top-level official job title, managed by Human Resources)
- other posts (usually a research group association, normally managed by a school administrator)
- location (edit this in Sussex Direct – go to Personal > Job > Your University Address > Edit)
- email (managed by IT Services and cannot be changed)
- personal homepage (a link to your own website in Sussex Direct – go to Personal > Contact Information and edit the contact information box. Make sure the link text is meaningful – e.g, name of research centre)
- telephone numbers.
Career details
Your front page contains the following career information.
- Biography
Go to Personal > Web Profile > Biography and choose edit.
Write your profile in the first person, not the third person. Talk directly to the reader. Students want to see us as approachable.
Avoid jargon and explain complex terms. Up to a quarter of Sussex profile views originate from foreign countries and a lot of our students are non-native English speakers.
Try to keep your biography to about 200 words if possible.
For more tips, follow our guidelines on writing and structuring web content.
For each section you edit, you must save your work.
Video
A good video increases the time people spend on your profile. The average viewing time for a profile is one-and-a-half minutes; videos can say a lot in that time.
If you want to make your own video, or re-purpose an existing video, contact the University’s video manager for advice on the best way to do this.
- Role
Go to Personal > Web Profile > Role and select edit.
Follow the same principles as mentioned in Biography (above) and keep this under 100 words.
- Qualifications and employment
Go to Personal > Job and edit the relevant areas using the available fields.
This is not essential for your profile.
- Community & Business
Go to Personal > Web Profile > Community & Business and click edit.
Include details of any professional associations you belong to and how you contribute to them. Keep this to one or two sentences.
Ignore the Research Interests and Publications List buttons.
Photograph
Your profile picture helps prospective students imagine what it's like to study at Sussex.
Your picture should be in colour and evenly lit. Avoid busy backgrounds and plain walls. Don't use holiday photos.
Edit your picture in Sussex Direct. Go to Personal > Personal Details and choose Upload Photo.
Your picture must be a high-quality JPG (preferably about 1MB in size) for processing through the IT system. You may need to change your privacy settings to show it.
The University's photographer is available for photo shoots. Contact your school administrator for this. If you want to take your own photo, read our photography principles.
Sub-sections of your profile
Depending on your role and level of experience, you may have other parts to your profile.
- Twitter feed
Go to Personal > Web Profile > Social Media and select the "sign in with Twitter" button.
It will then appear as a separate tab on your public-facing profile.
- Blogs, links and RSS feeds
Go to Personal > Web Profile > Social Media and choose "add" on the Social Media Web Sites menu.
Select what kind of site it is from the drop-down, enter the URL and use a descriptive term for the link text.
Linking to other Sussex websites or research centres helps improve your search rankings. Check links regularly to make sure they work.
Help
If you have concerns about how your profile could be used by the media, email the communications team: press@sussex.ac.uk.
If you have any text formatting issues or need help with editing tools and you are:
- an academic, see the Elements help pages.
- professional services staff, select the Help option in Sussex Direct.
If you have any other questions about your staff profile, email elements@sussex.ac.uk.